


Lullaby

by mneiai



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:17:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mneiai/pseuds/mneiai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He watched her life passing him by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lullaby

The last thing David saw was the empty cupboard. Despite the way his vision blurred, the darkness clawing at his thoughts, he managed the smallest of smiles. She was safe. He'd done his job.

The first thing David saw, was Emma. She was a tiny thing, lying alone in a crib, slowly learning not to cry because it never brought her any attention. He sang to her, the lullabies he knew by heart from the many hours his mother had sung them to him, but she didn't hear him. No one did. They didn't see him, couldn't feel him, he was just an observer. 

As she grew, he stayed with her, ignoring the bright light that sometimes appeared out of the corner of his eyes, the voices of his parents beckoning him to come find peace with them. The sorrow he felt every time he looked at Emma (with her tattered clothes and scuffed knees, dragging around a toy bear missing one eye and with stuffing pushing out from a dozen holes) was better than any peace. 

And even though it didn't work, whenever he tried to touch her, he still spent hours everyday concentrating on the task. He was convinced if he just wanted it enough, that eventually it would come to him. But a part of him knew that wasn't true, because when the Swans sent her away, David had never wanted anything more in his entire life, and death, than to just brush her hair or kiss her cheek. To show her she hadn't been abandoned, not by the people who counted. 

Emma grew up and the world only grew harsher. The longer she spent without finding a family, the less hope she had. She was still bright, her smile lighting up the entire room when she didn't hide it, making David feel better than any brush of the light from Beyond ever could. But beyond that there was a sadness, that made her stop drawing the family she imagined, that made her stop writing letters to a mom and dad she was slowly accepting would never come for her.

David still sang to her, every single night, sitting beside her on her thin cot and going over and over every song he knew, then coming up with new ones, ones just for her, when those failed to get through. Sometimes her lips would twitch, just a little, like whatever was happening in her dreams was a happy thing, and David would think he'd gotten through to her. Just because her ears couldn't hear, didn't mean her soul couldn't.

When she ran away, it was the worst and best thing she'd ever done. David followed, of course he did, and tried to tell her how to survive. But all of his knowledge of living in the woods, surviving without shelter, was useless to her. She didn't get sick. She didn't die. She didn't start doing the terrifying drugs that made David wonder how the Blue Fairy could ever think this world would be safe for her. Emma did start to steal, but David could justify that, just as Emma did. She needed it and no one had ever given her the option to do anything else.

The day she met Neal, David cried. He could tell as soon as they started to talk that this was something special. And he thought that maybe, finally, he could stop existing in terror for his little girl, that there was someone else to take care of her. He got to think that for entire months before he broke both of their hearts. 

After that, it was prison, it was the baby, and the loss of the baby. It was talking to Emma, who still couldn't hear him, who would never hear him, and telling her about what it felt like to give her up. About how they couldn't keep her, how they had to give her her best chance. How even though he doubted everyday that they made the right choice, he still knew it was the best choice.

She grew colder, then, more distant. She stopped seeking love out, though David could tell she desperately wanted it. Needed it. He stayed with her during those dark days, lying down in the bed next to her, singing the songs he'd made up. He told her everything about himself, about her mother, about her world. Sometimes he hoped she dreamed of it, sometimes he hoped that she never had to feel the heartbreak of knowing that was the life she was supposed to have.

Henry was...something else entirely. He was everything that Emma and Neal were and so many things they weren't. He was Regina's, and David wondered if that would have been Emma's fate, had they not sent her away. Henry had a book and he told her all of the things that David already had and David thought that maybe a part of her believed him, because somewhere deep inside she'd heard David all these years.

Mary Margaret was beautiful and perfect, and so tragic. She wasn't Snow, but there was just enough Snow there to hurt. She gave Emma as much as she could, but it wasn't enough. David was ashamed of himself, for some of the things he screamed at her, on the night that the Huntsman died. Because Emma needed her and she was there, living and breathing, everything David couldn't be, but she wasn't Snow.

Which wasn't her fault. It was Gepetto's fault, the Blue Fairy's fault. Pinocchio explained that, eventually. With every secret that was revealed to Emma, who still didn't have enough information, who still didn't believe, David became more and more aware of how foolish he'd been. He'd trusted all of the wrong people. Emma could have had a mother. Emma could have been raised as a princess by adoring parents. 

He hadn't known he could hate anyone this much, other than Regina, and George, and the Swans. But now he was starting to add himself to that list. 

And when the wrath latched onto Emma, when it pulled her through the portal into nothingness, he followed. For once he could concentrate enough, for once he could DO something, and as they spiraled through the unfocused magic, he used everything he had and thought of home. He thought of standing at the window, arms wrapped around Snow, hands pressed to her swollen belly as Emma kicked. He thought of the little nursery they'd spent so much time designing, the glass unicorns he'd had made by the best craftsman in the land, so that each looked like one of the real ones he'd seen in his journeys, the ones that someday he was going to show her. He thought of kissing Snow awake in the middle of the forest, their love burning so brightly that it changed the world. And now he burned even brighter than that.

Instead of nothingness, Emma and Snow fell through to their world. And for the first time since before she was born, Emma's father wasn't with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble originally posted on my tumblr knightinflannel.


End file.
